There is an extraordinary dynamic within the liturgical act which always holds up a ‘beyond’, at which the Church has not yet arrived. In this regard, there is always a proleptic, or anticipatory, dimension in the liturgy. One sees this, for example, in eschatological references such as are found in the Advent Collect quoted earlier where, after speaking of the humility of Christ’s birth, the prayer continues, ‘that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal’. The liturgy thus holds before us not-yet-realized aspects of Christian faith. In this perspective, the liturgy always points us to God’s future action, and thus works against attempts to fix the truth of the gospel in static formulas. To claim the gospel we are required to open to dimensions of it which have not yet been revealed, or which we have failed to discern.